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Safeguarding Children

With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the actions that I have taken over the past week, since I received last Wednesday morning the serious case review of the tragic death of baby P. As I said to the House on Monday, the whole nation has been deeply shocked, appalled and angered by the terrible suffering that this little boy endured. Since the jury reached its decision on 11 November, we have all read of the abuse that he suffered at the hands of adults that he lived with. That is something that I think we all struggle to comprehend. The case has also raised serious questions of public concern about how such a thing could have happened again, despite numerous contacts with social workers, police and health professionals—and in Haringey, too, the same borough where Victoria Climbié died eight years ago. We need to know what actions are urgently needed in Haringey to ensure the safety of other vulnerable children in that borough and proper accountability for what went wrong, and what further steps are needed to ensure that all children are safe across the country. It is our collective duty to do what we can to prevent such a tragedy happening again, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and to other Opposition Members for the support that they have given me over the past eight days for the actions that we have so far taken. Let me start by setting out the background. Following the death of baby P on 3 August 2007, and consistent with the statutory requirements set out in ““Working Together to Safeguard Children””, a serious case review started immediately to discover what happened and why. Serious case reviews are carried out whenever a child dies and abuse or neglect is known or suspected to have been a factor. They are instigated by the local safeguarding children board, which is independent of Government. The report should be independently authored. Local agencies should implement any interim lessons immediately, while the serious case review is still in progress, and working drafts of serious case reviews may be shared with Government officials. Since April last year, Ofsted has evaluated each serious case review to help to strengthen the system. However, in all cases, Ministers are not involved in any part of the process of undertaking and completing the serious case review and do not see draft reports. In this case, the executive summary of the serious case review was published on the afternoon of 11 November, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families and I received the full confidential report on the morning of 12 November. Having studied it, we concluded that there was clear evidence that agencies had failed, singly and collectively, to adhere to the statutory procedures for the proper management of child protection cases. This raised serious concerns about the wider systems and management of services for safeguarding children in the borough. Our immediate priority was to ensure the safety of children in Haringey, so, that afternoon, we arranged for the director of children's services in Hampshire, John Coughlan, to be immediately seconded to Haringey to help to ensure that proper procedures for safeguarding children were in place and being applied. He began that work the following morning. At the same time, I decided that Ofsted, the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection and the chief inspector of constabulary should carry out an urgent inspection in Haringey under section 20(1)(b) of the Children Act 2004. In particular, I asked the inspectors to look closely at the quality of practice and management of all services that contribute to the effective safeguarding of children in Haringey. The work of the national inspectors is under way, and I will receive a first report by 1 December. As soon as I have studied their findings, I will publish their report and the actions that we will then take. This tragic case also raises wider issues about child safety. It is now just over five years since we published Every Child Matters in response to the Victoria Climbié inquiry, chaired by Lord Laming. Both the joint chief inspectors earlier this year and Lord Laming himself have said that these reforms have significantly strengthened the framework for safeguarding children, and in local areas across the country there is much good work being done that is keeping children safe. However, as the joint chief inspectors also said in their July report, there is still much work to do to ensure that the reforms are being implemented systematically by all local agencies, so that children in every part of the country receive the protection that they need—a view that was repeated and reinforced yesterday in Ofsted's annual report. That was why we began a stocktake of local safeguarding children boards last month, including their governance and accountability arrangements, the independence of local safeguarding children board chairs and whether the statutory guidance needs to be revised. At the same time, we also started work to establish what more can be done to improve the quality, consistency and impact of serious case reviews. As I explained to the House on Monday, and immediately following the legal verdict on 11 November, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families and I asked Lord Laming to provide us with an urgent report of progress made across the country in implementing effective arrangements for keeping children safe. In parallel, we have also set out legislative proposals to improve children's trusts that will provide stronger area-wide accountability for the well-being and safety of children across all children's services. I met Lord Laming on Monday to agree the scope of his report, which will be ready early in the new year. He will report on the key features of good safeguarding practice and whether they are being universally applied across the country, including the development of the professional work force, inter-agency working and effective systems of public accountability. He will also look at the key barriers, including in the legal process, that may be impeding children's professionals in their work and stopping good practice becoming common practice—including whether the right balance is being struck between the correct application of processes when taking a child into care and the needs of the child. Lord Laming will also look at what specific actions should be taken by national Government and local agencies to overcome those barriers and accelerate improvement across the country. I have also decided to bring the work on local safeguarding children boards and the work on serious case reviews that we announced last month under Lord Laming's remit. I am pleased that he has today begun his work and that he has already written to experts and interested parties setting out how they can inform his findings. I have placed a copy of that letter in the Libraries of both Houses. Professionals working with children in this country do a tough job, often in very difficult circumstances. They have a great responsibility and they make very difficult judgments every day, but where serious mistakes are made, there must be proper accountability. We must never forget that our first duty is to make sure that all children are safe and protected from harm. We will not rest until we have the very best possible child protection arrangements to safeguard our most vulnerable children. The case of baby P is tragic and appalling. We have a responsibility now to take whatever action is needed to ensure that such a tragedy cannot happen again and that all children are able to grow up safe—in Haringey, and across the country. I commend this statement to the House.